Voices in the Virtual Silence

It wasn’t on the calendar in advance. No prior knowledge on my part. But as the weather cooled and the travel escalated, I kind of withdrew from my blog and facebook. Virtual silence. I’ve been lurking around, reading, an occasional comment, but I was putting my creative energy into other buckets. And then came the holidays and family and ahhhhhh relaxing.

The first week after the new year Michael and I flew to Aiken, South Carolina for the first school/teacher visit of the year. What a great way to come back into the world, not the virtual world, the real one. Real kids. Real classrooms. Real words put on paper. Thank you Beth and Sue and Joanne for all your hard work in putting the visit together.

Sad. Shy. Proud. Crazy. Here kids acted out an emotion before they wrote to put their movements into words, focusing on the motions of emotion.

Days like we had in Aiken, surrounded by a tumble of kids and ideas are what I need to feed my spirit and enable me to be strong and hopeful in the face of societal tragedies like what happened in Arizona.

Today we pack and get ready for our big trip to Hong Kong, Bali and Jakarta. Two big cities with paradise sandwiched in between. More excited writers and a vibrant green respite to do some of my own writing in Bali.